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Do you know who / whom she is going to marry ?

The usage of who and whom has been already explained on SE, going by that to find which pronoun to use we need to replace he / him in the answer, so accordingly him fits here that means I need To use whom here, but my book says who is fine, I know colloquially it doesn't makes much difference and in modern English we can replace whom with who, but this isn't the cause with my exam for which I am preparing I need to strictly follow the conventional grammar so just want to confirm if its a printing error in my book ? Correct answer should be whom , Right ?

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  • The use of the object pronoun whom is nearly dead in English. If your exam board would really penalise you for endorsing current English, their certificates aren't worth much.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jun 8, 2017 at 13:38
  • @FumbleFingers Well they don't give certificate, they give a white collar job ;) and I don't think a white collar job with a lucrative salary isn't worth .
    – user212388
    Commented Jun 8, 2017 at 13:46
  • Just use "whom" and you won't go wrong.
    – BillJ
    Commented Jun 8, 2017 at 16:27

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In informal use, "whom" is largely ignored and people use "who" in all cases.

But in formal writing, use "who" when the word is the subject of a verb and "whom" when it's the object. "Who knows Bob?" "Who" is the subject of the verb "knows" and so we say "who" and not "whom". "Bob knows whom?" "Whom" is the object of the verb, and so we use "whom".

In this case, the person in question is the object of the verb "know", so it should be "Do you know whom she is going to marry?" If you were asking who knows, like "Who knows when she will marry?", you would use "who". Or to put both in one sentence, "Who knows whom she will marry?" The "who" is the subject, the person doing the knowing. The "whom" is the object, the person who is known.

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  • Shouldn't it be "Do you know whom is she going to marry?"?
    – Vinícius Martins
    Commented Oct 30, 2017 at 14:52
  • @ViníciusMartins No. As you apparently realize, the word order in questions is different than in statement. "She is going to marry Bob", but "Whom is she going to marry?" But in this case, the change in word order applies to "Do you know", not "whom she is".
    – Jay
    Commented Oct 30, 2017 at 21:15

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